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Senate Confirms Tenet as C.I.A.'s Director

The Senate confirmed George J. Tenet tonight as Director of Central Intelligence, hours after the Justice Department notified senators that it had concluded its inquiry into Mr. Tenet's personal finances.

The final steps in the confirmation process, which had dragged on for months because of the Justice Department's inquiry, proceeded at a rapid pace, with the overwhelmingly voice vote in the Senate coming quickly after the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence approved the nomination 19 to 0 earlier in the day.

Senator Richard C. Shelby, Republican of Alabama and chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who had been a staunch supporter of Mr. Tenet, praised the new C.I.A. chief, saying: ''I'm very pleased and I am looking forward to working with Mr. Tenet.''

In a statement released shortly after the vote, Mr. Tenet promised to the Congress that it could expect ''forthright and candid views about our missions, programs, and priorities. I will not hold back.''

He said the employees at the C.I.A. would be his partners. ''I will challenge you and I invite you to challenge me.''

Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts and a member of the committee, expressed regret that the process had taken so long. ''The C.I.A. is long overdue in having someone to run it. I think he'll do a terrific job.''

In becoming the Director of the world's largest and most sophisticated spy agency, Mr. Tenet, 44, faces some enormous challenges.

The C.I.A.'s public record over the last four years has been a nearly unbroken litany of bad news. Two traitors from within the agency' Directorate of Operations, Aldrich H. Ames and Harold J. Nicholson, were unmasked after doing immeasurable damage. Secret operations were exposed in Iraq, France, Japan, India and Italy. The agency sat on evidence that chemical weapons had been present at an Iraqi munitions dump blown up soon after the Persian Gulf war.

Mr. Tenet is the fifth Director in six years and the 18th in the agency's 50-year history. He is also the second youngest to serve in the post.

In what may explain some of his relative popularity in the Senate, he served eight years as a staff member on the Intelligence Committee, becoming director of the 40-member staff in 1989. In 1993 he moved to the National Security Council as senior director for intelligence programs.

He is first Director to come to the job through the ranks of the Congressional overseers.

President Clinton nominated Mr. Tenet, who was then the Deputy Director, in March after the former national security adviser, Anthony Lake, withdrew his name after being heavily criticized by members of the committee.

Mr. Tenet, born in Queens, the son of a Greek immigrant who ran a diner in Little Neck, had served as Acting Director since December, when John M. Deutch left the C.I.A. in a Cabinet shuffle.

Mr. Tenet's confirmation had been delayed while Federal investigators examined his failure to report hundreds of thousands of dollars in stock and property that he had said he only recently learned he had inherited from his father.

In a letter delivered to the committee this afternoon, Seth P. Waxman, the Acting Deputy Attorney General, said ''there are no reasonable grounds to believe that further investigation is warranted.''